Month: December 2016
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DVD Review: The Man from Laramie
★★★★☆ When director Anthony Mann cast James Stewart, star of cuddly classics It’s A Wonderful Life and Harvey, he saw a darkness underneath his lead’s fatherly screen persona, and it’s this darkness that drives Mann’s 1955 feature The Man From Laramie, a psychological western as concerned with the destructive forces of revenge, privilege and resentment…
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A beginner’s guide to Brussels’ film festivals
People visit the Brussels area all the time, especially business people, due to its status as a political metropolis with the headquarters of the EU. You’re also not too far away from Ypres which is steeped in history and is the graveyard for many brave soldiers from both world wars. While it doesn’t quite rival…
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Six of the great European film shoots
Europe has long been used as the backdrop for some of our best-loved movie classics. Thanks to its rich cultural significance, charming street squares, ornate architecture, gorgeous cuisine and lively nightlife, it’s impossible to not consider Europe as the ultimate movie location. Everything seems more exotic when you get lost in the romantic aura of…
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Film Review: Snowden
★★☆☆☆ It’s hardly a surprise that Oliver Stone would want to make Snowden. He’s always been a filmmaker with a political conscience and his recent comments on Pokémon Go would suggest a healthy distrust of the surveillance state. It’s a shame then that his political thriller about Edward Snowden, based on The Snowden Files by…
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Film Review: Life, Animated
★★★★☆ We all love a Disney movie. Many childhoods have been warmed by their glow and generations are defined by what set of Disney characters are close to their hearts. For older viewers, the animals of Bambi and The Jungle Book were childhood friends, for the youngest among us perhaps the liberated women of Frozen…
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First Review: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
★★★★☆ Disney’s well-publicised decision to further expand its newly acquired Star Wars franchise beyond a sequel trilogy with a separate spin-off strand was hardly a revolutionary concept. For years, George Lucas and his acolytes have licensed books, toys and videogames all branching off – or bookending – the original holy trinity. For anyone not already…
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Film Review: I Am Not a Serial Killer
★★★☆☆ I Am Not a Serial Killer has a promisingly schlocky title, but Billy O’Brien’s adaptation of Dan Wells’ YA novel (scripted with Christopher Hyde) never quite escapes its adolescent inspiration. John (Max Records, last seen as the kid in Where the Wild Things Are) lives with his mom (Laura Fraser) in Clayton, a small…
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Film Review: The Birth of a Nation
★★★☆☆ Sometimes there are films that have such a whirlwind of media attention and extraneous commentary that it’s nigh on impossible to discuss them in isolation. Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation was already hauling around significant baggage by re-purposing the title of D.W.Griffith’s 1915 film – which was technically revolutionary and morally repugnant…
